Facets of Musical Existence: A Critical Overview of Five Issues in Music Ontology

Abstract

This paper investigates the multifaceted debates in contemporary musical ontology, arguing that the field is undergoing a paradigm shift from metaphysical inquiries into what a musical work is to a focus on the methodological and phenomenological frameworks that govern how we engage with it as a human practice. The analysis traces this shift through five key nodes, which collectively illustrate a progression from classic metaphysical debates over abstract objects (e.g., Levinson, 1980 ), through a foundational methodological split regarding the role of practice (e.g., Thomasson, 2004 ), to the recent turn toward the listener’s imaginative and phenomenological experience (e.g., Bourbon, 2018 ).” The paper concludes that traditional object-centric ontologies prove increasingly untenable, especially in the face of posthuman creativity such as AI-generated music. It advocates for a future direction for the field that moves beyond the static ontology of objects, reframing the central question toward the processes of music’s generative emergence as it is co-constituted within the dynamic feed-back loop of human practice, technological mediation, and imaginative listening.